Publications

Educators

September 2016
Article

When 3+1>4: Gift Structure and Reciprocity in the Field

By: Duncan S. Gilchrist, Michael Luca and Deepak Malhotra

Do higher wages elicit reciprocity and lead to increased productivity? In a field experiment with 266 employees, we find that paying higher wages, per se, does not have a discernible effect on productivity (in a context with no future employment opportunities).... View Details

Keywords: Wages; Performance Productivity

25 Jun 2014
Lessons from the Classroom

FIELD Trip: Conquering the Gap Between Knowing and Doing

years, MacCormack has led FIELD (Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development), a hands-on experiential learning program that has arguably revolutionized education at HBS more than any development... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Education

26 May 2015
Research & Ideas

Corporate Field Researchers Share Tricks of the Trade

The term "academic research" can conjure images of scientists conducting experiments in a basement laboratory, or of tweed-clad professors poring through old theories to develop new ones. But let's not forget about View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

March 2019
Article

When Does Advice Impact Startup Performance?

By: Aaron Chatterji, Solène Delecourt, Sharique Hasan and Rembrand Koning

Why do some entrepreneurs thrive while others fail? We explore whether the advice entrepreneurs receive about managing their employees influences their startup's performance. We conducted a randomized field experiment in India with 100 high-growth technology firms... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Management; Field Experiment; Peer Effects; Entrepreneurial Ecosystems; Advice; Management Style; Management Practices and Processes; Knowledge Dissemination; Entrepreneurship; Performance; India

2016
Working Paper

Saving More in Groups: Field Experimental Evidence from Chile

By: Felipe Kast, Stephan Meier and Dina Pomeranz

We test the impact of a peer group savings program on precautionary savings through two randomized field experiments among 2,687 microcredit clients. The first experiment finds that the Peer Group Treatment, which combines public goal setting, monitoring in the group,... View Details

Keywords: Saving; Decision Making; Interest Rates; Planning; Performance Effectiveness; Economics; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development; Social Enterprise; Global Range; Chile

2023
Working Paper

Personalized Game Design for Improved User Retention and Monetization in Freemium Games

By: Eva Ascarza, Oded Netzer and Julian Runge

One of the most crucial aspects and significant levers that gaming companies possess in designing digital games is setting the level of difficulty, which essentially regulates the user’s ability to progress within the game. This aspect is particularly significant in... View Details

Keywords: Freemium; Retention/churn; Field Experiment; Field Experiments; Gaming; Gaming Industry; Mobile App; Mobile App Industry; Monetization; Monetization Strategy; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Customers; Retention; Product Design; Strategy

Article

Using Fresh Starts to Nudge Increased Retirement Savings

By: John Beshears, Hengchen Dai, Katherine L. Milkman and Shlomo Benartzi

We conducted a field experiment to study the effect of framing future moments in time as new beginnings (or “fresh starts”). University employees (N=6,082) received mailings with an opportunity to choose between increasing their contributions to a savings plan... View Details

Keywords: Choice Architecture; Randomized Field Experiment; Savings; New Beginning; Fresh Start; Saving; Retirement; Behavior

February 2015
Article

'Open' Disclosure of Innovations, Incentives and Follow-on Reuse: Theory on Processes of Cumulative Innovation and a Field Experiment in Computational Biology

By: Kevin J. Boudreau and Karim R. Lakhani

Most of society's innovation systems―academic science, the patent system, open source, etc.―are "open" in the sense that they are designed to facilitate knowledge disclosure among innovators. An essential difference across innovation systems is whether disclosure is of... View Details

Keywords: Open Innovation; Cumulative Innovation; Incentives; Search; Disclosure And Access; Knowledge Sharing; Motivation and Incentives; Collaborative Innovation and Invention

SSRN

Article

Productivity Orientation and the Consumption of Collectable Experiences

By: Anat Keinan and Ran Kivetz

This research examines why consumers desire unusual and novel consumption experiences and voluntarily choose leisure activities, vacations, and celebrations that are predicted to be less pleasurable. For example, consumers sometimes choose to stay at freezing ice... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Innovation and Invention; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Performance Productivity

2020
Working Paper

Iterative Coordination and Innovation

By: Sourobh Ghosh and Andy Wu

Agile management practices from the software industry continue to transform the way organizations innovate across industries, yet they remain understudied in the organizations literature. We investigate the widespread Agile practice of iterative coordination: frequent... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Goals; Specialization; Coordination; Field Experiment; Software Development; Organizations; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Goals and Objectives; Integration; Software

November 2014
Case

Napalm: From Soldiers Field to Trang Bang

By: Tom Nicholas and Jonas Peter Akins

Napalm is one of the most destructive weapons ever to be invented. Yet, at its original inception it was nothing more than a technical challenge, and it was never intended to be used in indiscriminate antipersonnel warfare. The pathway of its development by a Harvard... View Details

Keywords: Moral Sensibility; War; Chemicals; Research and Development; Chemical Industry; Viet Nam; Cambridge; United States

Educators

June 2012
Article

The Transparency Paradox: A Role for Privacy in Organizational Learning and Operational Control

By: Ethan S. Bernstein

Using data from embedded participant-observers and a field experiment at the second largest mobile phone factory in the world, located in China, I theorize and test the implications of transparent organizational design on workers' productivity and organizational... View Details

11 May 2020
Working Paper Summaries

Targeting High Ability Entrepreneurs Using Community Information: Mechanism Design in the Field

Keywords: by Reshmaan Hussam, Natalia Rigol, and Benjamin N. Roth

18 Jun 2007
Op-Ed

Leveling the Executive Options Playing Field

together, they can be overwhelming and, frankly, mind-numbing. While my comments below are much more nuanced, I thought I would begin with a thought experiment that I've found helpful for simplifying the relevant issues. Imagine if you... View Details

Keywords: by Mihir Desai

Article

Gathering Data for Archival, Field, Survey, and Experimental Accounting Research

By: Robert Bloomfield, Mark W. Nelson and Eugene F. Soltes

In the published proceedings of the ﬁrst Journal of Accounting Research Conference, Vatter (1966) lamented that “Gathering direct and original facts is a tedious and difﬁcult task, and it is not surprising that such work is avoided.” For the 50th JAR Conference,... View Details

Keywords: Archival; Data; Experiment; Empirical Methods; Field Study; Analytics and Data Science; Surveys; Financial Reporting

Article

Performance Effects of Setting a High Reference Point for Peer‐Performance Comparison

By: Henry Eyring and V.G. Narayanan

We conduct a field experiment, based on a registered report accepted by the Journal of Accounting Research, to test performance effects of setting a high reference point for peer‐performance comparison. Relative to providing the median as a reference point for... View Details

Keywords: Relative Performance Evaluation; Reference Points; Social Comparison; Field Experiment; Performance; Performance Evaluation; Education